Mother-Daughter Relationship is vital in understanding women

It is gratifying see an increase in mother-daughter relationship issues being treated as something that deserves attention and help, just as much as couples counselling. The mother-daughter relationship is vital and undervalued, even marginalised within the UK, media, Universities, counselling courses and throughout the world. The marginalising of the mother-daughter relationship goes hand in hand with the silencing of women's history, with the sexualisation of girls and women, and with sexism and inequality still being an accepted normal. When we start to understand our female legacy and mother-daughter relationship more, we start to understand how sexism and inequality actually effects us and impacts our lives by reducing our self-esteem, reducing our choices and freedom, and by reducing women into roles and bodies, rather than human beings in their own right who are entitled to live their lives on their terms. This is why Women's Power Circles are so powerful because when women gather and start looking at the three themes we talk about in the circles - the loss of women's needs voice, feelings invisible and our reduced sense of entitlement, we start to peel away our internalised sexism and emotional silencing and start seeing our mothers and grandmother's as products and victims of the sexism in their generations. I am writing about this at the moment in the next book and I wonder how many doctors, writers, painters, etc have been lost in our mother's and grandmother's generations because they weren't allowed to follow their passion.
  

There is no such thing as a political wife!

I have huge respect for the way Nick Clegg's wife and partner, Miriam Gonzaliz Durantez has tried to keep herself intact and not give into the pressure to suppress her life, career, her identify as a woman in her own right behind her husband's career and new job.

I have no respect for Will Pavia who wrote in The Times on Saturday 15 May that she will be an asset to her husband because she beautiful and that "various hardnosed politcal hacks swooned slightly in her presence". What complete rubbish - not that she is in attractive women but that her asset is her beauty. What about her intellect, her thoughts and beliefs, her career, and her right to be visible and respected on her terms rather than just on what she looks like and her husband's job? And what about challenging the pure sexism that Nick Clegg's power is enhanced by his wife's beauty.

Have we not moved forward at all? It makes me sick seeing newspapers covered with skinny leggy women and their skinny bodies being presented as their source of power, wealth, and right to being visible.

Homeopathy is Witchcraft? Have we gone back to the middle ages?

The article in The Sunday Telegraph, May 16 2010 entitled "Homeopathy is NHS witchcraft" is pure sexism. It starts off saying that doctors, especially junior doctors are saying that homeopathy is witchcraft and should not be funded because it can't be proved as effective. The article ends with the worry about the huge increase of female doctors who may be wanting to take maternity leave. How are these two issues related?

The connection is the sexism inherent in calling Homeopathy as witchcraft and not seeing male doctors as fathers who also need time off to look after their children.

Reading it made me feel as if the witch finder, now as a doctor who can't see beyond the limited definition of scientific evidence, is allowed a free rein to decide what is right. It reminded me of my recent trips to the doctor and how he could only see my blood test as evidence and not how I was feeling. He even sniggered when I told him that I was less concerned about my borderline low thyroid functioning and more concerned that I was feeling exhausted. The two are connected but somehow that didn't seem to enter his mind. All he was concerned about was my blood test results. Feelings aren't apparently evidence, so neither is being helped by a homeopathic treatment that heals and makes life easier!?

This article concerns me because homeopathy and allied-health are very female dominated professions and it feels as if the witch finder of today doesn't need to hang or burn women as witches anymore to kills them. All he has to do is to economically kill women by discrediting their professions and their knowledge. All this article is about is a bunch of doctors screaming to preserve the reducing resources for themselves by discrediting homeopathy and by focusing on the increasing female doctors who can have babies. It is the same old trick of finding a scapegoat - women again, for the problem of reduced funding. The male doctors clearly don't think that their careers need to be effected by becoming a father.

I hear disturbing reports that killing women economically by not investing in their skills and professions during a time of financial hardship is already happening.

If you have any stories, please post them. I think we need to talk about this in order to stop it as much as we can and not internalise it as our fault or failing.

Where were the women when they negotiated this new UK government?

Hi Everyone - did anyone notice that not a single women was present during the days of negotiating how this new UK government was going to be formed? Last I looked, only 4 women have been given cabinet positions. What shocked me more was that I hadn't noticed that women were completely invisible in deciding who and how the UK was going to be governered until John Snow pointed it out when interviewing a female political reporter saying that she would be bringing in the only female voice. But she was only reporting, not deciding if women's interest and perspectives were going to be equally represented.

I was shocked that I hadn't noticed and how women's absence from political office has been so normalised in my mind and vision. It is as if I don't expect to see any women - but that is how inequality keeps going. It creates a normal that men govern, men make the important decision, men decide what is best for everyone and if women are invited, and yes that is the thinking of sexism that women need to be invited rather than it's our right to be present, they are only invited in small numbers so that they can't rock the boat.

I'd be interested in anyone else noticed this?

Disease to Please

Hello Everyone - I think I've uncovered more of the roots that is creating my blank mind when I'm about to blog. I think that my self-esteem to still too attached to being liked, which will successfully silence anyone. This is such a female issue! Why do we have to be liked? Who care what other people think? Females are so deeply socialised to worry about what others need, others feel and to not upset anyone that our thoughts, needs, and rights fly right out of the window.

I realised this after reading a small article in The Guardian, Thursday 6 May, about Germaine Greer being critical of Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolf is one of my favourite authors and in the article Naomi Wolf says that Germaine Greer is still, regardless of what she says, a mentor for her. She describes Greer as a "shit disturber and I just love that". As I read this I realised that I am a "shit disturber". I wouldn't be where I am today if I wasn't. I would be living a completely different life if I didn't disturb the shit in my family and the roles that my family, in-laws, and society were trying to pour me into. And I do believe my children would be different people if they didn't have a "shit disturber" as a mother.

I think that it is time I celebrated myself for being a "shit disturber" and to not feel afraid of doing it. Maybe I need to add "shit disturber" to my credentials. Things don't change without some serious disturbance and we all know that change is needed if women are to ever be viewed as people in their own right.

After all I wrote "The Silent Female Scream". This book is very serious about disturbing the shit that is silencing women. Amazing how easy it is to not see or recognise your own strength! A strength that has saved  my life because I know that if I wasn't a "shit disturber" I would've been very depressed.

Women become depressed when they are trying to fit around everyone else

Finally someone said it - Women can't have it all in a man's world - see Sara Parkin in the Guardian Newspaper, Monday 3 May 2010. Finally the truth that women will not be fully equal and visible on our terms if we keep trying to fit in with what others expect from us has been printed. What is expected from girls and women is so in twined with sexist thinking and inequality it is hard to untangle what is right for us and what is right for others.

There is so much pressure on girls and women to be what our family, friends, colleagues, work and school culture, media, music, fashion and exercise industries, and the list goes on - expect us to be like, look like, and act like. The conversation that encourages girls and women to really think what is right for them and what nurtures them is so faint, it's inaudible. And if it does break through the surface it invokes the palpable fear of girls and women becoming powerful.

No amount of legislation will make women equal and visible. No amount of legislation will create a world in which women have as much say as men. It requires us to connect together and dare to do it the way that is right for us. To connect together and force the corporate world to see men as well as women as parents, to force the corporate world to value the world and its inhabitants more than profit (as with this BP oil disaster), and to force industries that make money out of making women feel bad about themselves to change. 

This is what motivated me to keep going. Visit (I know here it goes again but I have to keep saying it against the din that so afraid of powerful women) Women's Power Circles.

Why does my mind go blank when I've got tons to say?

I've had another lesson on blogging and Internet marketing from Matt Duggan and I think I need to start my relationship with being a blogger at the beginning. I've got tones to say but when I sit in front of a blank new post my mind goes blank. There is so much I can talk about because there are tons of examples of women and girls being reduced to a sexist invisible caricature, or I can blog about my Power Circles or my Counselling, or the rise in mother-daughter relationship counselling, or my journey to creating a life on my terms post children. But what I need to talk about some more is why my mind go blank when I'm sitting in from of a blank new blog? I need to talk about this in order to break through the fear of getting it wrong. I know, it doesn't make sense. What could I possibly get wrong? In part this fear comes from the narrow role and sphere of possibility that the women in my family were expected to live within. But that isn't all. My mind goes blank because I live in a culture that silences girls and women.

I know that I'm not the only women whose mind goes blank whenever she is confronted with a chance to speak her mind. We are surrounded by an entire language that teaches us to keep quiet, worry more about what other people think than what we think, don't upset anyone, and definitely don't become too visible on your own terms. As all my Power Circle women know, the journey to living your life on your own terms is a journey in recognising this language and challenging message by message until you create your own language that gives you complete entitlement to be and say who you are.

The real truth about my fear of getting it wrong is that by not speaking, not living my life on my terms, not claiming my voice and thoughts, I will be getting it wrong. The fear of getting it wrong is just the way the silencing of women has manifested in me. We all have our own fears that the language that silences women locks in on and creates a false truth in our minds. But if we look closely at our fears it actually evaporates in a puff of smoke because it isn't telling us the truth. The fear actually hides what we must do in order to live our lives to the full. So here goes, to kill my fear of getting it wrong, I'm going to blog anyway!